


and it always leads to you (and my hometown)

by highpope



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29170041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highpope/pseuds/highpope
Summary: Based on the Taylor Swift song Tis the Damn Season. I suggest listening before reading!This is a JJ Maybank x Reader blurb about coming home from college and seeing your high school love.
Relationships: JJ Maybank x Reader
Kudos: 2





	and it always leads to you (and my hometown)

**Author's Note:**

> I write on Tumblr at highpope :) come say hi

we can call it even, even though I’m leaving

It’s different now. Things are different now. You want to ask if he’s okay, how things have changed. His blond hair darker now that summer is gone, the freckles faded and his eyes an icy blue. But for now, this has to be okay, his lips pressed against your own while the snow piles up outside. It’s better than being alone.

It’s the kind of cold fogs up windshield glass

He played with the rings on your fingers. His calloused hands running smoothly over yours. Your breath fogged up the windows of the same truck he used to drive in high school. The leather of his steering wheel was faded from where his hands' rest and the radio is stuck on the same station from the summer prior. The exterior paint is chipping in new places and the bumper is dented from an accident one Monday morning last fall. You remember he had called you nearly crying, pulled off on the side of the road. You were surprised to hear from him. He had said he had no one else to call. 

You were walking back from class admiring the leaves falling down. His voice broke when you picked up the phone, almost like he didn’t expect you to.  
“J, what’s wrong?”  
“It-it was an accident, I swerved. I didn’t want- there was a kid running across the road and I swerved and another car rear-ended me.” He inhaled sharply.  
“You’re okay.” It wasn’t posed as a question, but he took it as one.  
“Yeah, I think.”  
“Do you- I can stay on the phone? Until everything gets sorted out.”  
You did. You told him about your classes and how much you missed the beach and how pretty the leaves looked in Central Park. He listened. You told him you’d be home for Christmas. You stayed on the phone, silently, until the cops arrived to assess the damage and he was calm enough to drive home. He said he’d call.  
He didn’t.

You can call me babe for the weekend

He drops you off at your parents’ house. The Christmas lights illuminating the block and reflecting in the windows. A picture-perfect scene. You want to invite him in, but you both know it’s a bad idea. You take your time getting out of the truck, grabbing your bag from the backseat before pausing and looking at him. You try desperately to memorize the shape of his face. The way his nose curves and lips purse. You open your mouth to say goodbye or say really anything in an attempt to reverse time, but he speaks first. 

“I’ll call you,”

“Yeah, sounds good”

“Mkay, bye babe”

It almost makes you stop dead in your tracks. Almost. You know he doesn’t mean it the way you want him to. Not in the way it used to. It probably just slipped out.

You don’t turn around until you make it to your front door, keys in hand.

He didn’t wait. The road is dark and the only evidence that he had been there is left in the tire tracks of the snowfall. 

The day you started dating had been the hundredth time he had walked you home. He never came in though, had to get home before his dad came home from work, he said. That didn’t stop you from offering. Every single time. On the day that he asked you out, you were stopped at the bottom of your sidewalk. His hands were shoved in his pocket as he rocked back and forth.  
“You’re sure you don’t want to come in?”  
“No, no I'm good. Thanks though.”  
“No problem, I’ll see you at school”  
“Will you- Uhm. Do you want to be my girlfriend?”  
The memory makes your stomach hurt.

Time flies, messy as the mud on your truck tires  
Now I’m missing your smile, hear me out

He didn’t call. Or text. Or answer the door when you got up and drove to his house. 

You knew that showing up like that was a bit much, but you weren’t thinking. You hadn’t even realized until you were on the porch, knocking on the door that you had even driven there. Didn’t even know what you would have said. 

Maybe just goodbye. 

Maybe ask the question you’d been playing over in your mind since the night before you left for college.

“I don’t get it. What is changing all of a sudden?” he was sitting in his truck after dropping you off at home. Your life was packed into boxes you could see from the living room window. A now constant reminder that you were leaving in the morning.  
“Everything. Everything is changing. You’re going off and you’re doing great things while I’m going to be here. Stuck in the same fucking town as alw-”  
“So, me going to college is somehow forcing you to stay here?”  
He didn’t answer, only stared at the ground.  
“The plan was that we would do long distance. It’s not even a different time zone and we were going to visit and it’s essentially only a few months. We can make that work. You said we were going to make it work. The plan was-”  
“Plans change.”  
“I don’t-”  
“Stop telling me you don’t understand. You think I have enough money to drive up and see you? Or that I can take off work to do that?”  
You started yelling, heat pricking your skin as tears began to fall, “why won’t you try?”  
He was silent.  
“We weren’t supposed to be changing.”  
He took a long look at you, eyes flitting across your face before finally speaking, “I’ll call you. I love you.”  
His tires spun as he drove away.  
Do you?

and it always leads to you and my hometown


End file.
